Video: Double-flipping text

I've saved my progress as Three companies.psd. I don't need the rulers anymore, so I'll press Ctrl+R, Command+R on a Mac to get rid of them. In this exercise, we're going to take these three company layers that we've created and we're going to create more clones of them, more duplicates, we'll flip them over on the right-hand side of the composition which of course will make the text backward, so then we'll flip them again to make them forward, and here's how that works. Let's go ahead and select these three layers by clicking at one, Shift+clicking on the other and let's group them together; I'll press Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac to create a Group here and I'll go ahead and name that Group left.

In the all-new Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery, the third and final installment of the popular series, join industry expert and award-winning author Deke McClelland for an in-depth tour of the most powerful and empowering features of Photoshop CS5. Discover the vast possibilities of traditional tools, such as masking and blend modes, and then delve into Smart Objects, Photomerge, as well as the new Puppet Warp, Mixer Brush, and HDR features. Exercise files accompany the course.

Double-flipping text

I've saved my progress as Three companies.psd.I don't need the rulers anymore, so I'll press Ctrl+R, Command+R on a Mac to get rid of them.In this exercise, we're going to take these three company layers that we'vecreated and we're going to create more clones of them, more duplicates, we'llflip them over on the right-hand side of the composition which of course willmake the text backward, so then we'll flip them again to make them forward, andhere's how that works.Let's go ahead and select these three layers by clicking at one, Shift+clickingon the other and let's group them together;I'll press Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac to create a Group here and I'll goahead and name that Group left.

And then, let's make a copy of that Group by dragging it down to the bottomhere, to this little page icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and thatmakes a copy that's still called left because I turned that Copy feature offso that it's not called left copy, and I'm going to rename the bottom one right this time.Just for larfs here, as long as I'm organizing things, I'll go ahead and makeyet another copy of these layers for the middle set of text that will make up myfinal watermark, and I could do that by the way, I could either make a duplicateof the left group or the right group;it doesn't matter which one.

Anytime you're making a duplicate of any of these Smart Objects, they're alwaysgoing back to that single original.So, just to demonstrate that I'll grab right and I'll drag it down onto thepage icon, release and I'll go ahead and rename this group middle and we'llcome back to it later.But for now, let's go ahead and select the right group and I'm going to pressCtrl+T or Command+T on the Mac to apply Free Transform to the entire contents of the group.So there are three layers, three Smart Objects inside of this group and we cantransform them all together, but in order to make sure that I'm positioningthings correctly, I'm going to go ahead and drag this origin point target rightthere so that it aligns perfectly;it's not snapping for me, but I'll just visually align it with the intersectionof those two guidelines.

Then I'll right-click anywhere inside the image window and I'll choose FlipHorizontal, and when I do, notice that Photoshop goes ahead and flips my text,these three instances of these Smart Objects here, goes ahead and flips themover onto the right-hand side of the screen by virtue of the fact that it'sflipping around this origin point.Now then, just go ahead and press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac inorder to apply that modification.Now, obviously we've got some problems here because all of the text is backwardand that's not going to work.So, we need to flip it again.That's why I was saying this is a double flip technique.

Press Ctrl+T or Command+T again and I should say that anytime you're applying atransformation to a Smart Object, it's a nondestructive modification, butflipping is nondestructive by definition.So you can flip pixels as much as you want and because these are Text layers,why then that's nondestructive as well, because they're vector-based.Anyway, what that does is it goes ahead and resets that transformation originright there to the center of the text, which is very important.That way I know its positioned correctly, I can right-click once again anywhereinside the image window and choose Flip Horizontal again and it'll flip it likeso, so that the text reads properly from left to right.

All right, now I'll go ahead and press the Enter key or the Return key on theMac in order to accept that modification.The next step is to take care of the middle text.Now, the middle text isn't going to fit right there in the middle.I don't want three repetitions of Bob's Image Shack down the center of the imagetoo because then, we would be really stacking rows of text on top of each other;it would look wrong.In other words, if I grab that middle text, so I'll just go ahead and selectthat middle group and I'll just Ctrl+drag or Command+drag that text more or lessinto place, it no longer reads properly.What I really want is this effect right there, where the text is offsetand down, but we're only going to need two repetitions of the text to make that work.

So, I'll go ahead and undo that modification by pressing Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac;let's twirl open middle.Now, if you take a look at these thumbnails, you can see that the first companyis up, the second company is in the middle and the last company is down.So, we don't need the down company.I'm going to go ahead and select it and press the Backspace key to get rid of that instance.Then I'll twirl middle closed once again and I'll make sure it's active as itis, I'll press Ctrl+T in order to enter the Free Transform mode;that's Command+T on the Mac.Notice that origin point once again right there smack-dab in the center of the objects.

I'm just going to drag inside of my transformation boundary until that originpoint snaps to the intersection of my two guidelines like so and now I'm done.I'll press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac in order to apply mymodification and now let's zoom out and you can see that I've done a great jobhere of exactly aligning the repeated elements.Even though there's a certain offset associated with them, it works outperfectly and that's one of the real benefits associated with Free Transform.In a next exercise, we're going to transform all of our text intotranslucent watermarks.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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